A Shooter’s Playground: AKA Campus Gun Free Zones

At the college that I attend in South Florida, there had recently been 2 “shooter” incidents on the same campus within the past three months. I put shooter in quotation marks because there were no shots fired, but only threats.

For safety alerts, the school sends out mass texts and calls to all students to notify them to seek a safe area on campus or not to come at all if off campus. In the most recent incident, which happened in the afternoon, I did not receive the text message until later that night at around 11:30 pm; effective, huh?

In one of the incidents between three young men, who got into a fight about a cell phone, one of them flashed a gun but did not shoot it. In the other incident, a student made a threat about having a gun but was not actually in possession of it on campus; instead it was legally locked away in their car.

With a combination of thoughts about knowing the rise of “shooting threats” on my campus and the fact that it is a gun-free zone, this made me think about why in the world, of all places, schools are gun free zones. Although, it really isn’t the first time it has crossed my mind.

If any place should allow law-abiding citizens with legal concealed carry permits to carry their weapons, it should be on college campuses. It is absolutely absurd that college students cannot be allowed to defend their lives with a legal weapon while they are doing their daily duty of going to school – one of the places where they spend most of their time, not to mention one’s who actually live there.

Seeing the massacres that have occurred on college campuses, like Virginia Tech, it is hard for me to believe that more students would not be advocating the right to defend themselves. If there is any place that a deranged, sick and twisted person is going to choose to commit such a horrendous act, they are much more likely, I would say always, to choose a place where no one is packing heat except for the campus safety officer that is nowhere to be found half the time. (And that’s IF the campus safety “rent-a-cops” are even packing.

In the case of my local college campus, the police did respond quickly to each situation, so I do give them credit for that. But what if the incident had escalated? What would have happened if the students had shot at someone on campus? Would the police have known and been present when it happened and before it was too late? I doubt it, because it’s nearly impossible.

The only way to protect yourself, and those around you, from being gunned down by an irresponsible moron, who most likely has an illegal weapon anyway, is to be armed and ready to respond to a situation like that after having been taught the in’s and out’s of how to use a gun correctly. I would much rather be able to defend myself, and potentially those around me, than hide under a desk after reading a text message, waiting, praying, and hoping that I’m not in the shooter’s path.

Here are some stats from campuscarry.com about schools that have allowed concealed carry on campus:

Since the fall semester of 2006, Utah state law has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of Utah’s nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses).

Concealed carry has been allowed on the two campuses of Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, and Pueblo, CO) since 2003 and at Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) since 1995.

After allowing concealed carry on campus for an average of over five and a half years (as of January 2011), none of these 12 colleges (33 campuses) has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides) or a single resulting gun accident.

At the start of the 2010 fall semester, 14 Colorado community colleges (38 campuses) began allowing licensed concealed carry on campus, raising the total to 26 U.S. colleges (71 campuses) that allow campus carry. None has seen a single resulting problem.

As a petite girl who sometimes has to walk in the dark at school, I would feel much safer knowing that I don’t have to depend on either a text message or a police officer, who will arrive at the scene after the fact, to defend myself. Now that’s what I call empowering women.